Mobile App Wasalny Tackles Cairo's Traffic, Now in Arabic

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Amidst a wave of transportation apps being developed
across Cairo, startup Wasalny has worked hard
to differentiate itself through some very unique and intuitive
features. I must admit, this is one beautiful app.

Founder Samer ElBaghdady came up with the
idea for the app, whose name means “get me to my
destination," in 2009, hoping to tackle the infamous problem
of Cairo’s traffic. While the app first launched in October 2010,
it relaunched in December, after two years of further development
and customer feedback.

The new version is well organized,
featuring a photo taken by th Wasalny team of 10 for each
road featured on the app's main roads list. When a user first opens
Wasalny, there is a detailed tutorial of how to use the app with
easy English functionality. The app is being released in Arabic
this week as well.

With its sleek relaunch, the app’s number
of users nearly doubled, and the new Arabic release will only push
them further. Although their focus has been primarily in Cairo,
Wasalny operates in Alexandria as well, and the team continues to
increase their popularity there.

The Features

One of the most interesting and useful
functions of the app is automatic crowdsourcing of traffic data
through a mobile phone's GPS module. If users enable this feature
on their smartphone, the app automatically detects which road they
are on, how fast they are going and anonymously groups this data to
give other Wasalny users real-time traffic information for each
road. I asked ElBaghdady if their algorithm is able to take into
account pedestrians walking along a road who may have Wasalny
enabled. He assured me that their algorithm takes several user
speeds on each road into account before reporting on a road’s
traffic details.

To make the app as user friendly and
helpful as possible, Wasalny encourages users to take photos of the
traffic they are sitting in to post to Wasalny for other users to
get an idea of what’s ahead. Wasalny users can also like or dislike
photos and reports by others, which have first been screened by the
Wasalny team.

Further differentiating themselves from
Egyptian competition such as Bey2ollak, another community-based traffic
information service in Cairo and Alexandria, and potential market
entrants such as Lebanon's
Ma2too3a!, Wasalny offers users a heat map of Cairo’s
roads showing the congested and clear areas in color shades from
red to green. The app even offers a recommended path to reach your
destination with less traffic.

Revenue Model

Currently, the startup is sustained by partnerships with companies
like Social
Fruits and Etisalat. While Social Fruits assists with
development, Etisalat in Egypt makes the app available to
non-smartphone users, offering them the ability to dial *11# to
receive traffic information via an automated menu. Once a caller
chooses a road, Etisalat texts them the traffic information for the
fee of the text.

This shared revenue may not sustain
Wasalny in the long run however; ElBaghdady explains that once they
reach a certain threshold of users, they may start including ads on
the platform to get some more steady revenue. “We don’t want to
compromise the user experience and litter the app with ads,” says
ElBaghdady, “We’re still cautious about it and want the ads we get
to fit seamlessly in the UX of the app.” Most developers express a
similar sentiment, but so far they’ve been able to sustain
themselves through partnership and self-funding to continue
development.

Advice and Future Plans

ElBaghdady offers a piece of advice
for aspiring entrepreneurs: “Do not give up at all. If you think
too much about the details of the startup, you might get
de-motivated to actually do something. Don’t wait and think about
it, just do it.”

Moving forward, Wasalny plans to solidify
their coverage of Alexandria and eventually begin developing a
similar platform for cities across the region. As long as they are
able to find a way to effectively monetize and scale, Wasalny’s
clean design and simple functionality has the potential to attract
users from across the Arab world.

“It’s a long journey, and it’s a fulfilling
one. When you actually see people providing positive feedback and
say that they are benefitting from your work, there is no feeling
like it,” says ElBaghdady.

Update: Wasalny is also similar to mobile app Taree2y, both offer English and Arabic,
automatic speed detection, and a traffic heat map for Cairo.
Wasalny 1.0 was released first in 2009, but their 2.0 update and
release of Arabic only took place this year, showing a similar
tutorial to Taree2y. While Taree2y has a similar GPS
functionality, its registration requirement at first download is
cumbersome. Wasalny offers a rerouting feature, map pinpoints
showing user road pictures in real time, and personal travel
statistics, which Taree2y hasn’t yet released. Wasalny is available
in Alexandria as well.